Caduceus
by ProfessorCactustheThird
Summary: When Happy's genuine question about Toby's medical career brings up memories he has tried to bury for almost 2 decades
_Because I can't seem to_ not _find potential for angst after every episode… and then end with more fluff than Walter's cotton candy machine_

 _So much for taking a hiatus until my finals. This show is going to be the death of me._

 _(Also I know the title and summary made it seem pretty profound, but it's not really that big a deal imo. Sorry for the let down heh)_

* * *

"Toby?" Happy asked, looking up from the takeout she had been pushing around with her fork as she tried to find the words. "Can I ask you something?"

They had the day off- the new Walter 'make-every-second-count' O'Brien was so jovial it was disturbing, but who would say no to an off day, right?- so they decided to spend the day lounging around in his apartment, finally just the two of them for an entire day.

"You just did," he grinned in response through his mouthful of pad thai, but it turned into a frown when he saw her expression being more serious, more worried, than usual. "What's wrong, Hap?"

"Is this good enough for you?"

He didn't know what to expect, but he knew that whatever was coming wasn't going to be an easy topic, so he reverted to his jokes as a buffer. "I mean it's not exactly Michelin star, but after the day we had-"

"No, as in, this," Happy gestured to the space around them and Toby felt his blood run cold at the implication.

"Good enough?" He set both their food down to grip her hands in his. "Happy, this is more than I could have ever asked for. I love you, sweetheart-"

She looked down, the sincerity in his eyes more than she could handle even after all these weeks, though a small smile showed at the corners of her mouth. "I know, I wasn't talking about us... directly at least." She looked back up at him. "I meant Scorpion as a whole. Is it good enough? Are you happy there?"

"Is it good enough and am I... Wha- you know it's the best to ever happen to us, why on earth would you ever think different, love?"

"For the rest of us yeah, but are you sure it's enough for you?"

Toby forced himself not to panic, no matter what was going through her mind they'd fix it together. "Happy, love, please tell me what's wrong?"

She shrugged, looking back down at her lap though she kept their hands intertwined. "It's just, seeing you yesterday, you were so..." She paused, not quite knowing how to phrase it. "You were _you_. When you diagnosed that guy, and at the blood bank and profiling Wilcox, it was what you're trained to do. And it's not just today, even in Whitehall with the fungal infection when Megan-" She cut herself off and bit down hard on her lip.

"I know you hardly get a chance to do that in most of our cases, it's primarily Sly, Walt and I, and- and I don't think anyone would blame you, if you wanted to go somewhere you could put your skills to better use... at least I wouldn't." She finished so softly he almost couldn't hear her.

Toby blinked, trying to process everything she had just said. _Did she really think Scorpion wasn't sufficient for him?_ "Where... where are you getting this from, Hap? Why would I ever want to leave the team, and you?"

"To be somewhere you can really use everything you have, you know? And you wouldn't have to leave me, normal couples hardly ever work this close and things still work out."

"But we're nowhere near normal, remember?" He smiled softly and pulled her sideways onto his lap, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. "I can't imagine being anywhere but Scorpion, even in my wildest dreams. So maybe I don't usually take as much of a front seat as I did yesterday but that's a good thing. Power corrupts- just look at Walt," he smirked, heart warming as Happy mirrored his expression. He'd do anything to make her smile.

"Yeah, but-"

"But nothing," he stopped her firmly. "Scorpion _is_ what's best for me, love, for all of us. I tried the psych practice for a while in New York and the first few years before Cabe and Paige, and you know how that worked out."

Happy nodded, remembering how he was _too_ good at his job sometimes, figuring out secrets people didn't want getting out and being a little too blunt when giving out solutions to problems, and generally pissing everyone off.

"At a hospital? Just because you specialized in psych doesn't mean you can't do general medicine, right?"

"No hospitals." He practically snapped at her, stiffening and his grip on her waist subconsciously tightening to the point that it hurt.

For a moment it seemed like she had lost him to some past terror that had found in her words an excuse to rear its ugly head again. She didn't understand it though, he had been comfortable enough in the hospitals they had been in, some would even say he was in his element… _right_?

"Toby?" She prodded, but it was as if he was completely disconnected and couldn't hear her. "Toby, what's wrong?"

Her voice seemed to bring him back down from whatever memory was clawing its way back to the forefront of his mind. "What? Yeah, no I'm fine. Just... no more hospitals than Scorpion needs to, okay? And none without you."

Happy gazed up at him, wanting to respect his secrets as she so often asks of him, but also needing to know what had elicited this strong a response.

He sighed, tangling a hand in her curls absentmindedly, like it was a way to calm himself down. "It's..."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want me to," she reassured him quickly, but he shook his head, telling her that he wanted to tell her, that it was about time he stopped keeping it to himself.

"I was fifteen, just finishing up the internship requirements and, uh, my last surgery rotation was in the ER. We got a last minute case just before we had to clock off, a 19 year old driving back to his dorm after work was T-boned by a guy running the light. His '92 Corolla versus a speeding semi, he didn't stand a chance." Toby took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, opening them and continuing only when Happy shifted in his lap to hug him tighter.

"They tried everything, really they did, but he had cranial trauma and broke multiple ribs and the punctures to his lungs were too severe to... You remember how it was with Sanchez right? Imagine that but a thousand times worse."

She nodded solemnly, remembering how scary it was for her thinking that the agent might not make it, let alone for a fifteen year old Toby who pretty much _knew_ his patient was going to die.

"He was the first patient I ever saw flatline in front of me- he was only four years older than me and he flatlined on my operating table and I was just standing around watching-" he took in a jagged breath. "And I'd never been more glad that I was specializing in psych because there's a very little chance they'd die right in front of you and-" He was starting to ramble again, the panicking kind where his breaths were too short and too irregular, and she wouldn't know how to pull him out if it went too far.

Happy cut him off with a quick but urgent kiss, before he could drown any further in his nightmares, and it was only when she pulled back and he saw glistening droplets that had transferred onto her face that he realized he was crying.

"Were you involved in the surgery or...?"

He shook his head. "They knew it was serious so they made all of us interns to just stay back and observe. But the thing is, I knew more at fifteen than those senior doctors ever would in their lives and still I couldn't even offer any options or help. I mean what's the point of memorizing every text out there if you can't save people?"

"But you _do_ save people, Toby," she was quick to try and reassure him. "You saved the whole county today because you diagnosed in seconds what that entire surgical team didn't even think of. And also figuring out that it was Meliola anfracta that day,"

"That's because I'm with you," he said simply. "And the rest of the team. Knowing what is wrong doesn't matter when you aren't able to solve it. It makes it worse because you know what to do but you just _can't_ do it."

His voice broke at the last part, and she looked up at him to see he was staring past her again, a blank distance that she had never seen his eyes before. It was as if he wasn't with her on his couch anymore, but instead was back in that operating theatre- a scrawny, scared fifteen year old, forced to stand by with his batch mates as he watched the peaks of the ECG get shorter until it was just a flat line, the steady beeps merged into a single continuous high-pitched ring.

It simultaneously terrified Happy and broke her heart that she didn't know what to do or make him feel better.

"You were only fifteen-"

"And getting perfect scores for every test I took, but none of that mattered did it?"

"You said yourself there was no chance. Toby- hey!" She cupped his face to make him look at her even as he tried to shift his gaze anywhere else. "It wasn't your fault, okay? It wasn't anyone's fault but the other driver's."

"I know the accident wasn't, but him dying was."

Happy sighed, knowing that continuing this line of conversation was only going to pull him deeper back into his past. And she knew how he usually gets over dark patches- she'd be damned if pursuing this somehow drags him back into one of his old back alleys again.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" She asked softly and he brushed her hair behind her ear.

"Didn't need to," he shrugged, too casually, and Happy knew he was reaching his limits of talking about it. "I can generally handle it unless I'm back in that environment, but the last few times I've always had you, and the rest of the gang. I have my source of strength, and I have a team that'll never fail."

She offered him a small smile as she snuggled against him. "So that's why you didn't go with Walt to the OR when we came back with the blood." She said quietly, more to herself, but he heard it.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I wanted to go and make sure everything was okay, really I did, but if we were too late or somehow Walt had grabbed the wrong blood or they ended up needing that stupid third packet..." He sighed heavily and buried his face in her hair. "I couldn't have gone through all of that again, not when she was just a kid."

"But everything worked out, she's okay. You saved her."

" _We_ saved her," he stressed, then chuckled lightly. "I'll admit, it felt good to finally see an ER op go well, but once in a while is often enough. Maybe we'll stick more to the nuclear apocalypses, okay?"

Happy let him change the subject, playing along. "Seriously?"

"Or angry Mexican drug cartels, or genocidal dictators, or Elia's bright ideas..." he trailed off and made a face. "Okay maybe not Elia's bright ideas, those things really suck the life out of you."

She blinked as she registered what he just said. "Did you just-"

Toby winked at her, laughing, the usual light returning to his eyes. Happy knew this was just his defense mechanism, she'd figured it out long before he spelled it out for her on that hill in Bosnia, but she also knew how much she appreciated it when he dropped talking about her issues. They were bound to have another case in a hospital anyway, they can get back to this later.

"See, it's moments like this when I regret not helping Walt check the server blades instead." She grinned back, trying to climb out of his lap, but he tightened his grip around her waist to keep her there.

"And pass up the chance to kiss me? No way you would have."

She froze. " _What?_ "

"Even coma patients can feel things, Hap. You totally kissed me. I know."

"The oxygen deprivation messed with your brain, you were hallucinating."

"Come to think of it," he ignored her, "what is it with the Scorpion girls and kissing your guys while we're unconscious?"

Happy stared at him. "Paige kissed Walt. I was doing CPR to save your stupid life."

"And I appreciate that, but you don't have to go to Harvard to know you do the compressions first."

"Playing the Harvard card twice in two days, huh?" She shot him the look that dared him to continue at his own risk, and he swallowed nervously.

"Well, I mean-."

" _Well_ ," she held his arms down so she could stand up. "It's a good thing you remember that kiss, because you won't be getting any new ones for a while. For this, plus you still taste of that disgusting almond butter."

"So it _was_ a kiss?" His eyes brightened as he jumped up behind her to carry the rest of their food to the fridge, and she cursed at her slip. "Hap...?" He teased, beyond tickled that he had finally gotten her to trip up, blissfully overlooking her scowling at him.

"Turtledove? Sweetheart? Bunny?" He followed her around the apartment, smirking proudly. There was going to be hell to pay, but the leverage he had on her right now was too good to pass up.

"Yup, _really_ should've helped Walt with the servers." She muttered, blatantly navigating around his arms that were open for a hug.

"Nah, you know you don't mean that snuggleb-" he was cut off as she slammed the bedroom door closed. "I love you!" He shouted behind her, then grinned to himself. "And you totally do too."

* * *

 _I know this was super random, but hope you guys like it nonetheless! If you can spare the time, a comment would be lovely to know how I did (:_

 _Thanks for reading, love you!_


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